CBS's Giles Complains ObamaCare Fiasco Over-Covered by Media

December 24, 2013 - 6:17pm

On Monday's All In show on MSNBC, during a discussion of what stories were over-covered or under-covered by the media in 2013, CBS contributor Nancy Giles griped that the HealthCare.Gov glitches were overecovered, and seemed to suggest that hackers may have been to blame for ObamaCare's rollout problems. Giles began:

I thought the Healthcare.Gov Web site glitches, I thought they were kind of covered without context, like, there was no mention of whether they could have been hacked. I saw all these different Web sites, you know, KillObamacare.gov, you know, all kinds of problems that could have happened that way, site tampering, and there were a lot of people that signed up by phone and got on successfully. So I felt like the fixture on the Web site problems were a little too much.

She went on to complain that the story of a white man in Florida who shot and killed several unarmed black teens who has tried to use the Stand Your Ground Law as a defense should have received more attention, even though the man is still being prosecuted and there is no sign so far that he will be able to successfully used the defense-oriented law.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, December 23, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:

CHRIS HAYES: Nancy Giles, over-covered story of the year?

NANCY GILES: Over-covered. I thought the Healthcare.gov Web site glitches, I thought they were kind of covered without context, like, there was no mention of whether they could have been hacked.

I saw all these different Web sites, you know, KillObamacare.gov, you know, all kinds of problems that could have happened that way, site tampering, and there were a lot of people that signed up by phone and got on successfully. So I felt like the fixture on the Web site problems were a little too much.

My under-covered story was, unfortunately, another stand your ground case. A young man named Jordan Davis in Jacksonville, Florida who was with friends at a gas station playing rap music and a guy that pulled in named Michael Dunn decided that, somehow, he felt threatened and he thought he saw a barrel of a gun and he shot and killed Jordan Davis. And another young man lost for a ridiculous reason.

HAYES: A remarkable story. It was a gas station incident in which the alleged killer said that he told him to turn their music down. He, the alleged killer's white, young men in the car bumping hip-hop music.

Everyone who's ever, like, been anywhere in a gas station has seen exactly this interaction go down exactly this way. It ended with the alleged shooter saying that Jordan Davis, he saw a gun, he shot and killed. There was no gun in the car-

GILES: There was no gun, nothing.

HAYES: -which was established.

GILES: No gun, nothing.

HAYES: He, now, he attempted to use stand your ground. He's being prosecuted for murder, so we will see how this bears out in terms of how the Florida justice deals with it.

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